Multilitteratus Incognitus

http://harvardpolitics.com/covers/higher-education/tenure-tune-up/ I've been thinking about the concept of tenure these days, and the general concept or career prospects for the next 30 years for me.  I've applied to a PhD program in our College of Management focusing on Organizations and Social Change . One of my old professors, who also gave me a recommendation, asked me what I wanted to do with the PhD.  The interesting thing is that with a PhD, and without a PhD I am content in my current job role in academia.  I think a PhD would give me bragging rights (not that I'd want everyone to call me Doctor so-and-so), but it would also open up some avenues for jobs that are normally not open to those without a PhD, including teaching jobs. It is no secret that there just aren't that many tenure jobs around, and with the adjunctification of higher education, the situation may become worse. Who knows? Maybe I am pessimistic, but I don't see things getting better at

A couple of weeks ago I was online at the Sloan-C conference on Emerging Technologies for Online learning. It seems as though MOOCs were the thing for this conference, and in specific the different varieties of MOOCs.  That said, itseems like many acronyms were floating around both for non-MOOCs, and MOOC-like things such as SPOC, MOLE, BOOC and so on. I've written about the sillyness of acronyms before on this blog, and those following me on twitter probably saw my virtual eye-rolling when I was live-tweeting sessions. Don't get me wrong, I did like acronyms earlier in life, but mostly as a way to play with language. Now, in this environment, acronyms seem like a way to get you noticed, or to get you a paper that others may cite in their papers so you can get some research-cred.  Maybe I am a cynic, but I find that acronyms, in these cases, do obfiscate what's happening or trying to happen. For instance, I've written before about SPOC (small private online course). 

This past week, crazy events in Boston aside, two new MOOCs began: LTMOOC , on Blended Language Teaching, and the Phonetics and Phonology MOOC from the Virtual Linguistics Campus at the University of Marburg.  The Edx course on the Ancient Greek Hero took a hiatus week to allow people to catch up.  I am still sticking to the Ancient Greek Hero course, and I did try to catch up with the scrolls, a secondary reading that's meant to be "fast reading," but apparently I am not fast enough (I seem to be taking my time).  In any case, my strategy for the Edx course is to read the main reading, and participate in the course, and worry about the scrolls later. As far as the language MOOCs go, I decided to stick only with the Phonetics MOOC.  Blended learning is something that I already know about since I am an instructional designer, and given my applied linguistics background I can put 1 + 1 together; so with limited time and resources I opted to just keep an eye out on the

Last week I got an email from the MOOC guys running the VLC MOOC, and one of the topics was in the email was all about the certification process. In going through this MOOC (really a self-paced eLearning course, but more on that down below), I would like some sort of proof that I went through it (just in case someone asks), but by and large I really don't care for certification for individual courses. What I care about is the knowledge. Here is what I got from the VLC: Class Certification and Class End The class finishes on 31 May. Participants who have shown activity will be sent a certificate. We distinguish the following activities: - ActivityClass 0: no activity --> no certificate  - Activity Class 1: worksheet average < 60% --> confirmation of participation  - Activity Class 2: worksheet average >= 60% --> qualified certificate The certificates will be sent as E-Mail attachments in electronic form ready for printout. By the way, for the future (

I was looking over edX for a course that I could take out of interest, but also something that I could use to evaluate the pedagogy employed, as well as the platform (LMS) itself. I came across the Ancient Greek Hero, and since I never really did any classics in college, and the last time I read the Iliad was in 7th grade when I was in Greece, I thought that this would be a good chance to kill several birds with one stone: Re-read the Iliad (it's been on my list for a while) Learn a bit more of my own home culture, through a more mature learner lens See the pedagogies employed in this course See how edX works (thus far) Coursewise, I think that there are definitely quite a few nice ideas implemented in this course. First, there is an actual textbook (or at least something that is one volume of collected readings), and it's completely free. Nagy's  The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 hours (H24H for short) is something you can buy on amazon, but it's also availab

Well, now we're talking! ;-) I came across two MOOCs that are related to (one of) my subject(s) of study :-)  The first MOOC comes to us from Germany, although it looks like it will be conducted in English, and it's the Phonetics, Phonology and Transcription MOOC from the Virtual Linguistics Campus . I am actually quite psyched about this MOOC for several reasons: Phonetics and Phonology is something I've been wanting to undertake for a while, but haven't had the time; It uses a platform that I have not seen before, so I am curious on the technical end; It comes from a Non-English speaking country (I am interested in academic production in other languages, and how they are represented in MOOCs). Here is the intro video for the course: The second MOOC is LTMOOC (language teaching MOOC) which tackles the topic of blended language teaching. This probably won't be new to me (like the phonetics MOOC), but I signed up nevertheless because I am curious abo

OK, it's early in the morning, and I am reading my news, so I am generally going to be crankier, or more prone to have a "get off my lawn attitude," but this is just ridiculous.   The most recent facepalm moment in the world of education comes from somewhere near Cambridge, MA where a local MOOC platform is getting its start. I was reading a story on Inside Higher Education while coming to work this morning about Stanford joining edX.  I think this is pretty awesome because edX is a non-profit, and as such I can see more Openness, and willingness to be open, as part of a non-profit, rather than a venture backed system like Coursera.  Don't get me wrong, I don't think venture-backed systems are bad, I just have a feeling that they just won't be as open. As I am reading, I come across this new term: Small Private Online Course (SPOC) . Huh?  C'est quoi ça?  Well, I had to follow the link to find out! The link wasn't particularly helpful since it just

HeckI was browsing coursera today and I noticed a course, recommended to me, for underwater basket-weaving.  I was intrigued because I knew it's April 1st, so I am looking out for interesting things on the net (I don't believe anything in my RSS feed today :p). In any case, I clicked on the course  (see screenshot) and it has all the trappings of a joke when looking at the institution's page, you get a 403 error: Heck, even the intro video seems like a hoax: Someone please confirm that this is a joke :-)